Summertime temperatures and thermal comfort in UK homes

Abstract

[213 words]Internal summertime temperatures measured in 268 homes in the UK city of Leicester are reported. The hourly data was collected from living rooms and bedrooms during the summer of 2009, which was generally cool but with a short hot spell. Some household interviews were conducted. The sample of homes is statistically representative of the socio-technical characteristics of the city's housing stock. The data provides insight into the influence of house construction, energy system usage and occupant characteristics on the incidence of elevated temperatures and thermal discomfort.The warmest homes were amongst the 13% that were heated. Significantly more of these were occupied by those over 70 who are particularly vulnerable to high temperatures. The national heatwave plan might usefully caution against summertime heating.Temperatures in the 230 free-running homes were analysed using both static criteria and criteria associated with the BSEN15251 adaptive thermal comfort model. These indicated that that flats tended to be significantly warmer than other house types. Solid wall homes and detached houses tended to be significantly cooler.It is argued that adaptive criteria provide a valuable and credible framework for assessing internal temperatures in free-running UK homes. However, the temperatures in the Leicester homes were much lower than anticipated by the BSEN15251 model. Numerous possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.

Overheating in buildings: lessons from research

“…In concert with the storage capacity of modern laptops and easy-to-use statistical software, these campaigns have exposed the scale and extent of the overheating problem and have started to shed a light on which people, in which homes in which locations are most at risk. The reviews in the papers in this issue provide this background literature, but the following works are particularly notable (Armstrong et al, 2011;Beizaee, Lomas, & Firth, 2013;Lomas & Kane, 2013;Mavrogianni, Wilkinson, Davies, Biddulph, & Oikonomou, 2012, and associated works; Mavrogianni, Taylor, Davies, Thoua, & Kolm-Murray, (Palmer, Godoy-Shimizu, Tillson, & Manditt, 2016). i BUS -Building Use Studies questionnaire (e.g., Leaman, Stevenson, & Bordass, 2010).…”

Overheating in retrofitted flats: occupant practices, learning and interventions

“…The overheating risk in UK apartments has been identified by previous studies as particularly high, compared to other dwelling types (Beizaee et al, 2013;Lomas and Kane, 2013). In the mild UK climate, where the external summer temperature relatively rarely rises above a comfortable internal temperature, the vulnerability of apartments is due to their relatively low external surface to floor area ratio compared to detached houses.…”

“…CIBSE static overheating criteria for bedrooms relates to occupied hours only and these are typically assumed to be between 23:00-7:00, however it is worth noting that four out of the 95 BUS survey respondents and one of the 21 indepth study households worked in shifts which meant that their sleeping hours did not match those considered in the earlier studies (Lomas and Kane, 2013). Prevailing occupancy patterns for the 18 households were established based on repeated home visits and interview findings.…”

The Mitigative Potential of Urban Environments and Their Microclimates

“…The urban heat island highly affects indoor comfort conditions in low-income housing. Studies performed in different parts of the world have shown indoor comfort conditions during heat waves exceeded highly the set threshold limits for health and wellbeing [24][25][26]. It is characteristic that maximum indoor temperatures in low-income houses in Athens, Greece during the 2007 heat wave have reached 45 °C, while long spells with indoor temperatures above 30 °C are recorded [25].…”